Website Redesign: How to Protect Your SEO and Enquiries

Do you need a website redesign or a few targeted improvements?

Before choosing a new look, define the problem you want to solve.

“The website looks outdated” may be a valid first impression, but it is not a precise enough project brief. It is more useful to ask:

• Do visitors understand what you offer?
• Can they easily find the right service?
• Is the website easy to use on a phone?
• Do contact forms work, and are enquiries reaching your team?
• Can your team update the content without assistance?

If the problems are limited to individual pages, navigation or a form, targeted improvements may be a more sensible first step. A larger redesign makes sense when the existing structure and technical setup make several important tasks difficult.

If you are unsure what needs to change, a website assessment can help you separate urgent fixes from larger development work.

1. Record what your current website already achieves

Before making changes, establish a performance baseline. Without one, it will be difficult to distinguish the effects of the redesign from seasonal changes or changes in advertising.

For your most important pages, record:

Pay particular attention to pages that generate relevant enquiries. A page with fewer visits can have greater business value than a popular article that does not attract your target audience.

2. Make a plan for your existing URLs

A website redesign does not automatically require new URLs. If an address clearly describes its content and there is no good reason to change it, you can keep it.

Decide whether each existing page will stay, move, merge with another page or be removed. Google’s migration guidance recommends mapping old URLs to their new destinations and avoiding redirects from unrelated pages to the homepage.

Source: Google — site moves with URL changes.

This illustrative table shows how to agree on destinations before launch, so your developer does not have to guess where each old page belongs.

3. Set up redirects and update internal links

When a page moves permanently, a permanent server-side redirect, such as a 301 redirect, takes visitors from the old URL to the new one. Google also uses it as a signal when selecting the new canonical URL.

Source: Google — redirects and Google Search.

At the same time, update links in your navigation, footer, service cards and articles so they point directly to the final URL. Internal links and canonical tags should consistently reference the preferred version of a page.

Source: Google — consolidating duplicate URLs.

The distinction matters: a working redirect preserves access from an old address, while an updated internal link avoids an unnecessary extra step.

4. Keep the information people visit your website to find

During a redesign, someone will often suggest: “Let’s make all the text shorter.”

Shorter copy can be easier to scan, but first establish what visitors need to know before they send an enquiry.

On a service page, this may include:

• who the service is for;
• what it includes;
• how the working process unfolds;
• what affects the price and timeline;
• which projects demonstrate relevant experience;
• what happens after someone submits an enquiry.

Instead of removing information automatically, organise it into clear sections. The introduction should quickly explain the offer, while the rest of the page should answer the questions visitors need resolved before making a decision.

Content planning should therefore be part of your website design project, before the layout of every section is finalised.

5. Check technical settings before launch

A new website can look ready while still being technically unprepared for search engines.

One important check is noindex, a directive that tells search engines not to index a page. Make sure it has not been left over from development on pages you want to appear in Google Search. Blocking a page in robots.txt is not a substitute for noindex, because Google needs to access the page to read that directive.

Source: Google — blocking indexing with noindex.

Check canonical tags too. They should not point to a development domain or the wrong version of your content.

Your XML sitemap should contain the final URLs you want to appear in search. Submitting it helps Google discover pages, but does not guarantee indexing.

Source: Google — building and submitting a sitemap.

Plan these checks with the person responsible for your search engine optimisation.

6. Test the entire enquiry process

Do not stop at checking whether the contact button is clickable.

Complete a real visitor task: open a service page on your phone, find the contact option, fill in the form and check that the message reaches the right person.

Then check:

• what appears after a successful submission;
• whether errors are explained clearly;
• whether required fields are easy to understand;
• whether phone and email links open the appropriate application;
• whether analytics records a confirmed submission rather than just a click.

If your form is embedded from another service, test that part too. An embedded form may look fine but still have problems with its display height, data transfer or notification delivery.

7. Monitor results after launch

Launch is the beginning of checking how the new version performs in real conditions.

Monitor your most important pages, reported errors and the quality of incoming enquiries. If enquiries decrease, first establish whether traffic has fallen, visitors are submitting the form less often, or tracking alone is causing the apparent change.

When URLs change, temporary fluctuations are possible while Google processes the migration. Avoid attributing a decline to a single cause without investigation or promising recovery within a fixed number of days.

Source: Google’s site migration guidance.

Agree in advance who will monitor results and who will resolve reported issues.

What should you ask your agency before a website redesign?

Before accepting a proposal, ask for specific answers:

1. Who will analyse the existing pages and their performance?
2. Will URLs change, and who will prepare the redirect map?
3. Who decides which content stays?
4. Who will test forms and analytics?
5. Who will check the website after launch?

These answers help you understand what the project actually includes and where each team member’s responsibilities begin and end.